The Antidote
by charrrmed
Summary: After learning about Carl and Michonne's plans for Negan, Rick acknowledges that his house is on fire and calls for a family therapy session. Set in 7x08 Hearts Still Beating.
1. Chapter 1

Michonne's stomach was in knots as she approached the holding cell that Morgan had built. It was actually quite impressive, the fact that he'd built it almost from scratch. For the first time, she wondered what Morgan's profession was before the turn. Or maybe he'd learned some form of masonry after. They had all acquired skills after.

Wondering about Morgan's life was a good distraction from thinking about Rick, who she knew was in the holding cell. She wasn't sure why he was there. Carl hadn't been able to tell her. The boy had been a ball of agitated nerves when she'd walked into the living room, just pacing back and forth. And then she'd found out why.

* * *

 _Seven minutes earlier_

"What's the matter?" Michonne asked in her usual quiet timber, a deep frown on her face reflecting the many things that were on her mind after coming home to double tragedies.

Carl's heart was pounding as he paced the width of the living room. "I just got in a fight with my dad. Actually, he got in a fight with me," he explained.

"A fight about what?" Michonne asked, one hand resting on the chair in front of her. She expected this to be a quick conversation. She needed to talk to Rick. She was even gearing up to tell Carl that they could go into detail about whatever he and his father had fought about later. She also wanted to tell him to take his hat off. It was almost 8:15PM, and he was inside.

Carl stopped pacing as he realized that he was most likely going to get it a second time. Michonne would not be happy about him sneaking into Negan's compound either. Michonne had never yelled at him before, so this was going to be new.

He closed and opened his fists, preparing for a second onslaught. "He was mad about...me going…"

He stopped talking and exhaled through his nose. He needed to own what he'd done. It's not like he wouldn't do it a second time, so he should stop acting like a kid and speak clearly and with conviction. No stuttering.

He focused on Michonne. She was so calm now. She had no idea that she was going to fly off the handle in less than three seconds.

"I snuck into Negan's compound," he said flatly.

Michonne jerked forward, her body reacting beyond her control, the hair on her arms standing up in alarm. "You did wha-what?"

"I...well, it was more like I went in with a hail of bullets."

"Carl, what?" she asked as she walked around the chair, feeling short of breath as her skin prickled.

Carl involuntarily took a step back. "The bullets were coming from me," he clarified. "I took them by surprise and killed a bunch of 'em, and I almost got Negan, too."

Michonne's mouth hung agape and dry. And then she snapped it shut and stood to her full height. "You're lying."

"I'm not-"

"No, _you_ are lying. You're _lying_. You _did not_ do something so stupid. Right?!" she snapped.

When Carl only stared at her, Michonne abruptly turned around and covered her face with her hands, an image of Ron Anderson's lifeless body swiping into her mind's eyes before quickly morphing into Carl's lifeless body. She imagined Negan rolling Carl's barely recognizable dead body off of the back of a jeep with his boot, as if the boy didn't deserve any respect, as if he had never belonged to anyone.

"What were you thinking?!" she exploded as she spun around, her locs swinging. "What the hell were you thinking, Carl?!"

"I was thinking that something needed to be done."

" _No._ That wasn't _doing_ something. That was a display of an incredible amount of _stupidity_. You went in with a hail of _bullets_?! That was it?! That was your plan? The element of surprise?!"

When Carl didn't say anything, her fury bubbled over. "Seriously?! _Carl_. What part of _we are handling it_ did you not understand?"

"We're _not_ handling it," Carl argued. "Doing what they want is not handling it."

"Do you realize you're lucky to be alive?" Michonne asked as she advanced on him, her mouth tense as she enunciated the words. "Do you realize that it's a miracle that you _walked_ through those gates as opposed to being _dropped_ _off_ in a body bag?! _What_ the fuck is wrong with you?!" she shouted as she slapped the wall next to his head.

"Nothing," Carl answered with a flinch. He slipped away from her and put some distance between them. "Look, I didn't mean to scare you guys. I'm sorry for that."

"He could've killed you! Negan is-"

"I know," Carl cut her off calmly. "I know he could've."

Carl watched as she heard, really heard what he'd just said. For the second time that night, he watched someone he loved with all of his heart absorb the fact that he'd gone after Negan that morning prepared and willing to die.

"What?" Michonne asked quietly, her body numb now.

It was the smallness of their voices that tore through Carl. He would take the yelling, screaming, and cursing a thousand times over the quiet surprise, because the quiet surprise was something of a false reaction. They weren't just surprised. They were heartbroken.

"Carl?" Michonne began as tears pricked her eyes. "I know that this is not being handled as fast as you want it to-"

"It's not about fast," he assured her. "I just wanted to do something. For you, and for dad, and for everyone. I wanted to take care of it."

"And you thought this was the way? You thought this was the answer?"

Carl lowered his eye to her feet.

"I want an answer," Michonne said sternly.

Carl thought back to what had happened once he'd come face to face with Negan. Negan had taken complete control of the situation, of him, without firing a single shot.

The wound where his other eye used to be throbbed dully as he remembered how Negan had forced him to expose himself. "I just...wanted to do something," he said quietly, feeling as powerless as he had when he'd been sitting across from Negan.

"This wasn't it," Michonne said. "This conversation is not over." Disturbed, she left the living room and the house, intent on finding Rick.

Carl shuffled over to the couch and sat down. Negan had made him feel powerless. He remembered that Negan had wanted to make his father feel the same after Glenn and Abraham's deaths. His dad had been defiant and strong and that had pissed Negan off. He'd found his dad's weak spot and pushed it until his dad had cried and begged.

Negan had found his weak spot today. He'd snuck into the compound, defiant and strong. And then Negan had meticulously peeled off an insecurity that he had not thought would matter at a time like this and reduced him to tears. And he had not done what he'd set out to do. As a matter of fact, he'd helped to make things worse for his dad.

* * *

 _Now_

Michonne didn't know how to say what she wanted to say to Carl. _I don't want you risking your life._ How could she tell him that she didn't want him risking his life when they essentially risked his life every time they involved him in a plan? How did she make her feelings matter to him? How did she explain the difference between what they usually did and what he'd chosen to do?

She reached the holding cell and paused. Either Rick was in there because he'd needed a breather after dealing with Carl, or he'd gone off to die privately of a heart attack. She wouldn't blame him for either, especially the latter. The boy that she cradled in her heart had essentially just told her that he'd gone on a suicide mission. She wanted to lock herself in a room to avoid dealing with a Carl who could make such decisions. And she wanted to lock Judith away with her in hopes that the little girl would never grow up to make such decisions.

If Rick had gone to the holding cell to die to escape this added layer to their new reality, she wouldn't blame him one bit.

She turned into the cell to find him squatting on the floor over something she couldn't see. She did see the hatchet on the floor, next to him. Her eyes roamed over the curvature of his back, and she thought about how much stress he was holding in. She'd tried to help with some of it today. Now, in light of Carl's ill-advised actions, in addition to Spencer and Olivia's deaths, and Eugene's abduction, she was more than likely about to add to it.

Rick shifted on his feet and turned to confirm who was behind him. The cell was dimly illuminated by the moon's light, and he saw Michonne. He wasn't surprised. He was familiar with the pattern of her walk. It was one of the many things that he hadn't realized was a fact until that magical night on the couch.

He could use some magic in his life right now. It felt like everything around him was being poisoned, including his brand new relationship.

"Hi," Michonne said as she entered the cell.

"Hi," he answered gruffly as he stood to face her.

"Carl told me you were in here. He also told me…" The conversation with Carl pressed down on her shoulders, making them more tense. Now that she knew that Rick was alive, she wanted to yank him into that room with her and Judith and lock them all inside. "He told me," she said.

Rick nodded.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

Rick titled his head to the left, a physical tick indicating the heady mix of frustration and anger that he was feeling. "Spencer's dead," he stated with disgust. "Negan gutted him after he...he tried to betray me, told Negan that I was out of control, and that he should be made leader instead, as if you fuckin' _ask_ to lead. Olivia's dead, because _Rosita_ took a shot at Negan and damaged his bat instead. Tomorrow morning, I'll know if I need to take Aaron to Hilltop, because the Saviors beat him up, because they found some fucking note in one of the crates we stole."

He picked up the note that he'd been absentmindedly looking at and handed it to her.

"Congrats for winning, but you still lose," Michonne read aloud. "Who wrote this?"

"I don't know. But they naturally thought we did and decided to…"

He shook his head, finding it unnecessary to finish.

"Tara told me about Spencer and Olivia. And Eugene," Michonne said as she folded the note. "I didn't know about Aaron."

"Any one of them could've been Carl. He...Negan spent all day with them, him and Judith. He was in the house…"

He lowered his head and swallowed back the rage. That was what he'd been doing since that night in the woods: swallowing back his rage and turning it into something docile and impotent.

Michonne's skin became clammy with the new information. "Where's Judith?"

"She's okay. He didn't hurt her. She's sleeping. Negan said that after what happened today, what we brought back isn't enough, so I'll have to go back out soon. Probably day after tomorrow. He didn't say when he'd be back, but I imagine he'll send his people to collect soon enough."

 _And then what?_

Michonne didn't ask him that, because it was an unfair question to pose.

"How are you doing? With Carl," Rick specified.

Michonne shook her head. "I want to shake him, yell at him, and hide him somewhere far, far away."

"Sounds about right," Rick said with a grim smile.

The poisonous silence that he was growing to detest snaked its way into the room. It weaved between them as they blinked at each other, both wanting to say something, both wanting to turn upright whatever had flipped upside down between them.

Michonne began to fold her hands, but she pushed them back down to rest at her sides, rejecting the defense mechanism. "I need to talk to you about where I was today and about what I found."

"What?" Rick asked, preparing himself for more bad news but also hoping for something good.

Michonne licked her lips. "I went out to find Negan. I wanted to get to his hideout."

Betrayal knifed through Rick, and the poison seeped into the wounds. He turned from Michonne, unable to look at her in that moment. He'd known that she was planning something. She'd been up and out of the house early for a solid week. The first two times, he'd asked her where she'd gone, and she'd answered that she was practicing long-range shooting. She felt it was important, since Sasha was at Hilltop for the time being.

It had sounded practical. But he'd also suspected that there was something more behind it. So he wasn't surprised by her admission now. Just hurt by it.

"Why?" he ground out, his back to her.

"I don't know," Michonne answered after a moment.

"You don't?" Rick asked swiftly as he faced her again. "You don't. You went looking for him, and you didn't know what you planned to do when you found him? Come on, Carl gave me more than that."

"I wanted to kill him," Michonne blurted. "I wanted to find him, and I wanted the perfect opportunity, and I wanted to put a hole in his brain without him seeing it coming."

"That's why you've been practicin'," he accused.

"Yeah," she confirmed.

"Well, I'm sorry you missed your chance. He was busy terrorizin' our son. It worked, too, because he can't even tell me what went down between them."

"What do you mean? He looked-" She realized then that she'd been so busy panicking and yelling at Carl that she hadn't taken a good look at him.

"All I could get out of him was that he didn't hurt him. He said he doesn't want to talk about it yet."

Michonne's mind tried to go wild with horrible possibilities, but she reigned it in and forced herself to concentrate on her conversation with Rick.

"I didn't get close to where he lives," she said, her tongue heavy. "I don't think so. I don't know. I found one of his people: a woman named Isabelle. All she took me to was...Rick, there are more of them than we thought. _A lot_ more."

"I could've told you that," Rick said dismissively.

"Rick, I wanted to go with you and Aaron. But I couldn't. I had to go my way. I...I had it in my mind that I would find him, and I'd kill him, and you'd come home, and I'd tell you that we can keep what you found. We can keep what you worked so hard for, because he's dead. He's gone. I wanted it to be that easy.

After I realized what was in front of me, I killed that woman and ditched the car. I saw what's in front of me, Rick, what's in front of us, and I don't wanna move forward alone," she said as she walked to him. "I don't want to figure this out alone. I don't want it to be _my_ way. I want it to be ours, me and you. I want to move forward with you."

Rick's eyes were trained on the cement floor. He heard her but not really. His mind was stuck on one thing. He didn't want to ask, but what the hell did he have to lose? Nothing, according to two of the three people who held his heart.

"Were you planning to die?" he asked, so softly that Michonne heard the question one second after he'd asked it.

"No," she said firmly.

Rick didn't believe her. He lifted his head, and there were tears in his eyes. "Say you'd found him, say things went wrong. How badly would you have wanted to kill him, being so close?"

"Not _that_ badly, Rick. The point of this is for us to _live_. We are outnumbered by those people. It's not even close. Things went to shit today-"

"You have _no_ idea," Rick said.

Michonne nodded. "It doesn't change the way that I feel about all of this."

The admission shocked Rick to his core. He turned from her to pick up the hatchet. "I'm gonna go shower," he said as walked past her.

"We're still _alive_ , Rick," she plead as he walked by.

"By the grace of God," he answered promptly as he faced her. "Or Negan, I should say. You do get that, right? We are alive, because he's _letting_ us live. _Olivia was next to Carl_. She was so close that he wasn't sure he wasn't hit when the gun went off. _Negan was holding Judith_."

The unabashed fear in his tear-filled eyes crushed Michonne. That locked room was looking so good right now. She quickly closed the distance between them and cradled his face in her hands. "I know, baby, I know."

"No, no," Rick said, shaking his head as he removed her hands from his face.

He did want her to hold him. He'd been thinking about it since he'd kissed her goodbye a few days ago. The sun had abandoned this shitty, shitty day, and he just wanted her to hold him. He wanted to curl into her and forget about everything he'd seen and everything he was dealing with. But it was all wrong. Everything was wrong. Now, she was one of the things he was dealing with.

He left her in the cell.

The poison stayed with her and simultaneously shrouded him as he headed to the house.


	2. Chapter 2

Rick decided to take a cold shower. Not that he needed any more shocks to the system. But he didn't want to feel warm and comfortable. He felt anything but, as a matter of fact, so a cold shower was appropriate. It was invigorating, as cold showers tended to be, which helped clear his mind of his feelings: a tornado of fear, inadequacy, rage, anxiety, and love. He was able to think more rationally.

As he scrubbed away the last few days, he went over the state of his life.

His community was in shambles, which...wasn't a totally new development. The herd of walkers that had besieged Alexandria a couple of months ago had brought the original Alexandrians closer to his group, but he wasn't sure if it had solidified anything, if Spencer was to be used as a metric.

Spencer. The boy had met his natural end. He didn't feel sorry for him. He only hoped that Deanna would truly rest in peace now that her remaining family was with her.

Then there was his inner circle, the people who had been with him before Alexandria, the people who were supposed to trust his judgment. Rosita had made an attempt on Negan's life. A stupid fucking attempt, no doubt in retaliation for Abraham's murder.

Speaking of stupid fucking attempts, there was his inner, inner circle. Those were the people he could not live without.

Carl hadn't concealed how he felt about how he was handling their predicament before he'd left with Aaron a few days ago, so he wasn't surprised that he'd gone behind his back. It was how he'd done it and his mindset going in that scared the shit out of him.

And Michonne. His partner and best friend had gone behind his back.

His feelings of inadequacy spun back into his mental musings as his body got familiar with the cold water. _She doesn't trust how I'm handling this. She thinks she can do better. She expects me to do better, and I'm not. She's wondering why she should wait for me when she can do it herself. She's right._

He lifted his face to the shower head, eyes open, and let it wash the feelings down, down his body and down the drain.

Closing his eyes, he filled his mind with Michonne's voice instead.

 _I had it in my mind that I would find him, and I'd kill him, and you'd come home, and I'd tell you that we can keep what you found. We can keep what you worked so hard for, because he's dead._

 _I saw what's in front of me, Rick, what's in front of us, and I don't wanna move forward alone._

 _I don't want it to be my way. I want it to be ours, me and you._

 _I want to move forward with you._

He opened his eyes, turned the water off, and resumed washing and ruminating. Michonne had wanted to help. That was why she'd done it, not because she didn't trust him, but to help. That was why Carl had done it, too, but he could live easier with how Michonne had gone about things. She'd gone with a level of stealth that could have afforded her plausible deniability if things had gone, well, right. The Saviors wouldn't have been able to retaliate against her or them if they didn't know who'd shot Negan. Although, with Gregory being the insufferable coward that he was, Rick wasn't sure who else the Saviors would have suspected.

Michonne wanted to fight, which scared the shit out of him. That was new. Her fighting spirit was one of the things he admired about her. He would have never guessed that it would one day be a thorn in his side.

He needed to make a decision and fast. Despite the fact that Negan had killed two members of his community and taken Eugene, he was lucky that the man had only decided that the food they'd brought back wasn't enough. It could have been far worse. Granted, Negan didn't know about what Michonne had attempted to do, but for every person who attempted to defy him, Negan would strike to send a message. Soon, it wouldn't matter that Rick was playing along and doing as he asked. Negan would only see that he could not keep his community under control.

He dreaded fighting. He feared for Carl, Michonne, and Judith. But two of the three didn't share his fear. A huge part of him wanted to simply focus on Judith and stay the course. Let Carl and Michonne do what they thought was right. But his house was on fire, and he couldn't ignore it. They needed to get on the same page, and, unfortunately, he didn't think the page was going to be his.

He finished up and stepped out of the spacious shower stall. He grabbed his towel and dried most of his body. He then shuffled it over his hair so that it wouldn't be dripping wet. Finally, he wrapped it snugly around his waist.

He ran his fingers through his clean hair as he opened the door and walked into his bedroom. Seeing the state of it again, no mattresses, no frame, barely any furniture, simultaneously made him want to fight and ruffle as little feathers as possible. He would rather the Saviors take his furniture than any more of his people's lives.

Michonne turned from the bedroom window when she heard the door open. She and Rick looked at each other, and then he moved to the corner where they kept the remaining clothes that they had. He squatted on the floor to pick up his shirt and pajama pants.

Michonne remembered the sight of their burning mattresses. She, and Rick, and everyone in Alexandria were sleeping on the floor, because the Saviors had taken their mattresses, not because they'd needed them, or even to teach them a lesson, after which they could have given them back, but because they'd wanted to show who was in charge. The Saviors could fuck with them and so they had, and she didn't know how she was supposed to accept that as her life for the foreseeable future.

She also didn't know how the hell she could go about bringing Rick to her side now. She'd rehearsed everything in her head, and even out loud at times, during her trek back to Alexandria. She'd promised herself that when she saw him again, they would not put head to floor without her convincing him to fight, to stand by her side. She'd been convinced that her words would be enough. She just needed to remind him of a couple of things.

Unbeknowst to her, fuckery had been afoot, and it had all served to send him retreating further. What the hell were her words against everything he'd witnessed and felt today? He was terrified, and she sympathized with him. Watching Negan sadistically demand that he chop Carl's arm off had been gut-wrenching, to say the least. But, ironically, Rick's fear was a major motivation for her desire to fight back. Anyone who could strike that much fear in him needed to be put down.

The subject of her musings walked over to the bed that he'd made before hopping in the shower. She'd found him making it when she'd come back to the house. She had told him that she would make it, and he could go shower, but he'd declined her offer, so she'd gone to Judith's room to watch her sleep and see for herself that she was unharmed.

Michonne watched Rick uncinch the towel and drop it on the sheets on the floor. She scanned the full length of his body, especially his abs, pelvis, and thighs, welcoming the distraction from her dilemma.

Rick pulled his pants up and looked at Michonne, and she raised her eyes to look at him. She blinked and then went to the bathroom, but he'd recognized the look in her eyes. Appreciation. She'd been looking at his body. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and he shook his head.

Forty minutes later, Rick was sitting crossed-legged in the middle of the bed, waiting for her to finish brushing her teeth and come out so that he could enact the decision that he'd come to. When she did, there was a frown on her face. Her hair was wound up in a secure knot above her head, like it usually was for her non-wash day showers.

"I keep forgetting that I don't have lotion anymore," Michonne groused. She sighed and went to the same corner and picked up her pajamas. Just like Rick had done before her, she moved to stand beside the bed and removed the towel from her body.

And just like she'd done before him, Rick gave her a once-over, paying particular attention to her breasts, hips, and mound, because, like she'd said earlier, they were still alive. If she would just turn around for whatever reason and afford him a look at her ass, he would be set.

Michonne slipped the shirt over her head and tugged it down. They'd slept naked in their bedroom right up until the Saviors put them under their thumb. They didn't feel comfortable being so exposed anymore. In their own home.

"We need to talk about Carl," Michonne said as she bent over to pick up her towel. She straightened and held her hand out so that Rick would give her his.

"Yeah," he said as he bunched his towel into a ball and threw it up at her.

"I'm not comfortable with him making these types of decisions," she said as she went to the bathroom, where she hung their wet towels on the racks.

"He's growing up," Rick lamented. "He can drive," he added, regretting the day he'd taught him. "He can make these types of decisions."

"Yeah, but how do we steer him away from making them?" she asked as she emerged from the bathroom. She lowered herself to the bed and crawled on her knees to the middle and sat next to Rick.

"He thinks this is worth dying for," Rick said. "I don't know how to change his mind about that, but...I do want to do one thing. Come on," he said, standing. He was going to give her his hand so that he could help her stand, but she was already standing. So he grabbed her hand instead.

It was as if they were touching for the first time, a testament to how much the poison had infected their relationship. She instinctively curled her fingers around his and squeezed a little, hoping that he wouldn't let go too quickly. He squeezed back, telling her he wouldn't. He smiled a little, and so did she, and Rick wanted to kiss her. Instead, he raised her hand to his lips and placed a firm, lingering kiss on the back of it. Michonne relished the feel of his beard.

When they arrived to the living room, they found Carl lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling.

"You don't plan on showerin'?" Rick asked.

Carl sat up and swung his legs to the floor. "I do," he answered. He grabbed his hat from where his head had left it and began flipping it over in his hands. "I was just hanging out for a little bit."

"Thinking about what?" Rick asked.

Carl shrugged. Without looking at his dad, he answered, "Today. Stuff."

Rick nodded and removed his hand from Michonne's. Placing it at the small of her back, he urged her to go have a seat next to Carl, and he took the chair.

Michonne took her seat, putting Carl in the middle of her and Rick.

Rick placed his arms on his thighs, mimicking Carl's position as he leaned forward. "I want to talk about what you two did. Or, why you did it. I want us to talk about what exactly you were trying to fix."

"Carl," Michonne called to get his attention. She decided to tell him about the plan that she'd ended up abandoning, emphasizing the fact that she had planned to carry it out _at a_ _distance_.

"It's better that you backed off," Carl said sagely. "I don't know what he would've done if you'd found him."

"That's my point," Rick said. "We do know what he would've done. We just don't know how or to who. Or how many."

Carl nodded. "I'm sorry I scared you guys. I really am. Really."

"I want us to talk about Glenn," Rick declared as he rubbed his hands together.

Michonne and Carl sent uncomfortable looks his way, which told Rick that he was making the right decision.

" _I_ need to talk about him," he said. "You know, we have a really bad habit where we lose people, and then we...kind of give everyone their space. We don't _talk_. We let Daryl wander off into the woods and maybe Carol will go talk to him. Glenn will talk to Maggie. Maybe we each eventually make our way over and say something. Maybe we don't. Maybe that works for us as a group. I mean, not everyone wants to talk, right? Sasha didn't. I saw that. But that can't work in this family. It's _not_ working. That's why this happened. I don't think it's just wantin' to fix things. We haven't talked. And I want us to. Tonight. I don't want us dealin' with this alone. So? We can't take this to a professional, so we're gonna do our own family therapy. I'll start."

He squeezed his hands together as he remembered Glenn in his last moments, disfigured but still...still telling Maggie to go on, that he loved her.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to control his emotions, trying to keep them dull. He stayed like that for a while.

Michonne left her seat on the couch to kneel next to him. She looped her hands around his bicep and kissed his shoulder blade and then the side of his head.

Rick released a shaky breath and opened his eyes. He looked at Michonne and rubbed her forearm. He looked at his son, who was holding back his own tears, and he said, "I haven't slept since he died. I can't make it through the night. I can't stop thinking about it, about him. Glenn was... _was_. I don't know how to accept that. That he _was_. He saved my life at the beginning, and he saved us many times over, and I couldn't save him. He made sure we ate. He got us through it. All of it. I watched him grow up, mature, and suddenly he's gone. Just like that. Just like that. And I'm stuck on...on that. We went through somethin'," he said, nodding. "And we need to talk about it. He deserves that. He deserves for us to talk about him," he said, his voice trembling.

He began to cry, and it was the first time he truly let it out since Glenn and Abraham's deaths.

Carl wiped his cheeks and tried to find his voice. "I've been feeling like...like he's alive. Maggie being at Hilltop made it easy. I felt like he was there with her, and he was fine. He healed somehow, and he made it over there, and he was with Maggie. I felt like, I don't know, somehow he couldn't die. Like you, dad. And you," he said to Michonne. "I didn't know I felt that way until it happened. Until he...he was killed like any other person. I saw Maggie when I went to Hilltop. I didn't talk to her, but I saw her. She looked...not like herself. She looked different. She looked less alive. It was so weird," he whispered, his lips trembling.

"She's in a lot of pain," Michonne said, leaving Rick to rejoin Carl on the couch.

"I know," Carl said.

Michonne rubbed his back before she pulled him into a comforting hug. Carl went limp as he cried, purging his emotions.

Rick moved to the couch and sat next to Carl. He rubbed his back and squeezed his shoulder. "Come here," he said after a while, and Carl switched over to him. Rick placed an affectionate kiss on his head and spoke to him in dulcet tones as he held him.

Michonne watched them and felt more determined than ever to put Negan six feet under. "I don't like being boxed in. I don't like being told that I have no choice. I don't like someone breathing down my neck, telling me how to live and when to move. I think...I think Glenn would've been the first person to say that we shouldn't have done anything behind your back," she told Rick with a small smile.

Rick smiled in turn. "He had a problem with lying. As in, he couldn't do it for long before spilling his guts."

His choice of words made him think of how things had ended for Spencer. He pulled his thoughts back to Glenn.

"It was shocking," Michonne said quietly. "Not in the moment," she clarified, her voice shaking a little. "It was in the moment, and it wasn't. In the moment, I was mostly focused on Negan, watching him. I didn't...I didn't focus on what was happening. I don't know why I never do. It was the same with the Governor and Hershel. As long as the threat is moving…As long as it can still get me..." she shook her head as she remembered what Glenn and Abraham had been reduced to. Negan possessed a savagery that she had never seen before.

"When he took you," she said to Rick, "I almost fainted. I don't know how I didn't. I was light-headed, and I thought...I thought he was gonna come back with your dead body. I wouldn't even be able to recognize you. I wanted to throw up. But then I told myself that Negan didn't get where he is by being stupid. He wouldn't kill you to make an example when he had...so many other options. It felt like you were gone for hours, and during that time,...I...just...stared at them. Maggie was dying, and we couldn't even hold her."

Rick stood and kissed her forehead before sitting next to her. She looked at him, and her brown eyes were drowning in unshed tears.

"We couldn't hold Maggie, and the Saviors were just talking and laughing like they didn't just destroy our world. One of them stepped on…"

She began to shake, and Rick held her tight while Carl leaned on her and held her hand.

"And he dragged his fucking feet on the ground to wipe it," she said before heaving a big sob.

Rick's mind conjured up the ghastly image, and his blood curled.

He'd never wondered what it had been like for the group during his impromptu ride-along with Negan.

Michonne eventually quieted down, and a thin, tepid silence took over the living room. It brought with it a hollow acceptance. They would never see or hear Glenn and Abraham again. They would have to move on. Their memories would have to be enough. They would be haunted by deja vus, but their lives had been irreversibly changed. They'd gained two more profound scars, and those scars would ache from time to time for years to come and usually when they least expected it.

It was Michonne who disturbed the silence. "Carl," she said as she lifted from Rick's chest, her vocal chords raw. She turned and looked at the young boy in front of her, and she felt her emotions surging again. Grabbing both of his hands in hers, she said, "I love you. We both love you, and we don't want you to ever, _ever_ do something like that again. Do not ever expose yourself like that again. _Please_."

"We're not supposed to lose you, Carl," Rick said from his position behind Michonne, sounding drained. "It's supposed to be the other way around. Can you please do your best to respect that? At the very least, respect the fact that your actions have consequences for everyone else. It happened to Daryl, and it's happened to Rosita. You don't want something like that on your conscious. Right?"

"Yeah," Carl said, resigned. "I won't do it again."

Michonne lifted his hands and kissed them.

"I'm really sorry," he repeated. He lifted from the couch and kissed Michonne's forehead and then Rick's.

"I love you," Rick said.

"Love you, too," he replied. He picked up his hat and retreated upstairs.

Michonne exhaled deeply as his footsteps faded. "You didn't teach him to accept defeat. That is not what you've been teaching him," she said.

"I know," Rick said. "I've also been teaching him to be careful and smart. I've been pounding that into his head since this whole thing started."

Michonne turned to face him. "All we can do is believe him."

Rick nodded. He caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. Her skin was a little dry, which brought back to mind her annoyance at not having lotion anymore.

"We definitely didn't go easy on you today," Michonne said sympathetically.

"No, you didn't," Rick confirmed. "You two...you're my life. So is Judy, but she's following directions just fine. I'll die if somethin' happens to either one of you."

"We're still here," Michonne said as she gathered his hand in hers and brought it down from her cheek. "We're still here, and we need to do something with that. So much has happened, so much that we shouldn't have lived through. But we've lived. We're still standing," she whispered as tears welled in her oval eyes. "And we need to _keep_ standing. We need to make the fact that we're still here _mean_ something.

We're the ones who get things done. You said that. We're the ones who live. That's why we have to fight. Not for us, but for Carl. For Judith. For Glenn's baby. For Alexandria, for the Hilltop. For all of us. We can do this, Rick. We can find a way to beat them. But. But. I only wanna find that way with you."

Moved by her plea, Rick had to make a couple of attempts to speak. "Aaron. He gets why I'm doing this. He gets it, and I know you do, too. Today, I watched him get his ass beat, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do about Glenn. I know that...there isn't...an end to this. I know there's no such thing as doing what Negan says, because he keeps moving the bar. There's no reward for this; there's no...there's no respite, no peace. It's just constantly tryin' to reach the bar that he keeps movin'. Aaron believes in my choice," he said with a laugh that was mostly a scoff. "I need to make that worth somethin'. I need to give him a reason to keep believin' and trustin' in the choices I make."

As he mentally committed to the decision, he began to nod. "Let's do it. Let's find a way together."

Michonne held her breath, unwilling to believe her ears. "Really?"

"Really. We're standin', so let's do somethin' about it."

"We won't rush anything," she assured him.

"We need numbers. We need people."

"We'll do it smart," she confirmed.

"And we gotta do it quick," Rick attested. "Not rushed, but a lot of people means a lot of mouths, lot of emotion-"

"Lot of chances for someone to get scared and bring the whole thing down," Michonne agreed.

After weeks of not being on the same page, they easily fell back into their best. Rick was almost distracted by how seamless the shift was.

"We'll start with the numbers we know," he said. "We'll go to Hilltop first thing tomorrow morning. For now, we'll only tell the people who were there that night."

Michonne nodded, filled with pride. His grave timbre told her that he was still afraid of all of this, but he was making the commitment to push past his fear and go forward, like he always did. "We can do this," she repeated.

"I know," he said simply. He knew that, together, they could do damn near anything. He only wanted to take this dangerous risk with her, and he was glad that, after taking her own way, she'd arrived to the same conclusion about him.

"It's nice of you to use my words against me, by the way," he said with a tilt of his head. "We're the ones who get things done? We're the ones who live?"

Michonne grinned. "What can I say?" she asked as she smoothly lifted herself from her seat and stood in front of him. "It wasn't your finest moment, but they were good words," she said, remembering his frustrated rant at Deanna and the Alexandrians almost half a year ago.

Rick reached for her things as he shifted so that his back rested on the couch, and she straddled him.

"They definitely stayed with me," Michonne admitted quietly before capturing his plump lips in a kiss meant to properly welcome him home from the run.

Before he completely gave himself over to her, Rick moved forward on the couch and stood with her in his arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist, but he laid her on her back.

"We have an early morning," he said as he left her to turn off the light in the living room.

The sliver of light from the kitchen allowed him to avoid bumping into anything as he made his way back to her.

"But let's do this for a little bit," he said as he covered her with his body.

"You're not mad at me anymore?" Michonne asked.

"I'm furious," Rick answered, knitting his eyebrows for effect.

Michonne squinted at him before breaking into a smile. "No, you're not."

In typical Southerner fashion, Rick's _a little bit_ wasn't a little bit at all. He and Michonne made out until their bodies grew hot with yearning for more. He kissed her neck and teased her breasts until she was beside herself and desire flowed from her center. She sucked on his tongue until he could no longer ignore how loaded his dick was.

Somewhere along the way, they lost their shirts. Michonne had Rick's pajama pants halfway down his thighs, and she was palming his ass while he traced the shell of her ear with his tongue.

They kissed away the horrors of the day and embraced the hope for a liberated future. Together, they made magic on the couch.

 **The End**


End file.
